Archive for August, 2009

Started reading a book about blogging

blogging
The last book I bought was a total failure. It was titles “How to make millions off your ideas” which sounds great right? Because I have a ton of ideas all the time. Most of them super awesome! As I started reading the book, it felt dated to me. I then checked the publishing date which said 1996. I threw the book away. I can’t be reading a book about how to make money in this tech filled online internet world if AOL 4.1 wasn’t even out yet. It would be fine to read if I was taking a history class or something. That being said, I am sure its a good book, and has some good ideas. I didn’t really throw it out, I just put it down for the time being. I only made it past chapter 2, and from a tip I read in The 4 hour workweek, don’t waste your time on something just to finish it. Tim made reference to walking out of a crappy movie. Same goes for a book. I may come back to it later.

The new book I started is called “Problogger: Secrets for blogging your way to a six-figure income”. Already threw chapter 2, and this book is way way better than the last. Like a breath of fresh air. So far I have learned that I am what you call a typical failed blogger. I possess all the traits of what NOT to do haha. I find that pretty funny, but what I take from that is I am running the gauntlet. With all my mistakes, I can turn them around. Look, I’m writing a blog post right now aren’t I?

I don’t plan on going pro blogging, I’ve already come to the realization that I find it a chore to keep writing. I am more fascinated by the building of blogs, and the technology behind it. Which makes sense, I am a programmer, not a writer. As I am very quickly finding out right now, with all the miss spellings, and red underline text I am seeing as I write this.

Where am I going with this? I need to figure out what I’m really trying to do with blogging. What I think I am realizing after the first chapter, is that I don’t want to make money off blogging directly, I want to make money from blogging indirectly. Meaning, I would like to use blogging to get more business for what I enjoy doing. Like building websites, and helping other people starting their own sites. I’ve helped many friends start their sites, and have been learning and sharing my tips with them. I will throw in the word SEO, for some good SEO google indexing right? Probably not going to work.

Since I don’t write very often, it will probably be a while before my next post. Now top off the post with a nice pictures and I’m finished. Back to reading.

What I’ve been up to

Cuervo at work
I haven’t posted in a few weeks. It’s already August! Time is flying by, but it doesn’t feel like summer because of all the sweet rain we have been having in Boston.

I gave moneyanswertree.com a new theme and it looks awesome. More professional looking.

I’ve been testing out click through rates on twitter with some of my ads. I’ve posted links to a few products on twitter, and tracked the links CTR on my affiliate sites. The numbers were good. 14-25% CTR. Only 1 conversion though. But thats ok for the small amount of clicks I got.

I’m still building up my twitter followers, I am over 1100 now. It was up to 1200 a week ago before twitter did some user maintenance and deleted all those spam accounts. So my follower count dropped a lot and I guess its a good thing. Shows how many followers of mine were spam.

Other updates, I will be making a new iphone app soon, and I will be changing this sites theme to another wootheme – Busy Bee. I should probably apply for the iphone dev program now because it might take a month or so before I am accepted. That will give me a good time frame to do the development in.

Thats all for now :)